Faithful Flowers
by The Invader Androgynous
Summary: Dib has nightmares about his dead mother on the same day that strange things begin happening in town. Not talking about them won't make them go away. What's killing the people of this quaint little hamlet... and why does it look so familiar to everyone?
1. Crazy Home

In a laboratory, not a dark laboratory or even a spooky one, there were things happening. The walls were plain and white; it was located at the end of a plain, white hallway. Not a hallway that just anyone could go down, mind you. It required passing through a security checkpoint and signing yourself in on a sheet of yellowed paper.

In truth, it wasn't even a real laboratory. It was a morgue, a place filled with cold and lifeless bodies and whispering medical students, residents with their heads full of facts and clouds. 

The head technician was dreading that night's work. The woman had been the wife of a somewhat prominent scientist, an up and coming future Nobel Prize winner perhaps, who had dropped dead for no apparent reason in her kitchen while tending to her young infants. And the man, the scientist, wanted to be there for her autopsy. It seemed that he refused to believe that there were things in the world that couldn't be explained. 

Pulling on white gloves that stank of industrial processes but were necessary to keep tainted blood off the fingers, equipment was laid out. The corpse, stripped and helpless, faced straight up into lights that were hidden by closed eyelids.

They began working. Such a request had only been made once before in the history of this particular morgue, and the man who had made that request had been out in a dead faint before they'd barely even gotten started. But this man, this man staring out at them with eyes they couldn't see, didn't even so much as breathe it seemed. How could he stand to see them remove a loved one's organs like that? How could he sit there and not break down into sobbing, hysterical tears over the dead flesh that had once been so full of life and promise?

A flicker of light tricked the aged technician's eyes. He'd thought he'd seen the woman's slender fingers move. Then he noticed the golden ring, still tightly attached. "Hey, they forgot to take this off," he commented, reaching down and grasping the ring in his hand.

With a hiss, the woman leaped up, her face the unhealthy gray of a preserved organ and not the fading pink of one freshly dead. He saw her yellow eyes, saw her fangs and she reached out and grasped him in her fingers, which had become like claws as they ripped into his flesh. She forced his head down, her bare ribs scraping past his cheeks as his face was thrust up against her still bleeding heart, dripping raw blood onto his face. He could taste it in his mouth; he could feel the icy grip of fingers around his neck…

He had kicked the blankets off the bed, and his window was open. Flopping back down onto the bed, a young Dib tasted the salt rolling down his face. Why? Why were his only memories of his mother horrifying images of her as an undead being, ripping into flesh? His father hadn't been present at her autopsy… he'd been taping a segment of his show when it had been carried out, Dib had discovered only after much researching and hacking. 

His mother also hadn't died of unknown complications, she'd dropped dead of a rare and unpredictable heart condition, a genetic one at that but one that neither he nor Gaz seemed to inherit the genes for. The one piece of luck he'd had in his life, he supposed as he sat up and pulled the blankets up off the floor. And, as far as his research had found, there certainly hadn't been any morgue workers who had turned up dead after her autopsy.

No, his mother had gone quietly to the crematorium, where only ashes of a once beautiful woman remained in the end. From his research on the autopsy process he had discovered that it was possible, although highly unlikely, that her brain still remained somewhere in formaldehyde. There was no point in finding out, for anything that made it the mind of the woman it used to be would have been gone to the preservation fluids and ebbed into the world. It had ebbed in the world to visit her son only in the form of vicious nightmares. 

Dib stood up to go to his window, realizing when his vision cleared that dark bars crossed the window and fell in a patch of white and black across the floor of his room. It was only then that the twinge of recognition hit him. Not safe in his own bedroom, but spending another two days, three days… a week, perhaps, locked up inside the Crazy Home for boys. 

He hated it. He hated it so much. One day, they'd see that they were wrong. He wondered why he even bothered. Let the aliens, let the machines, let whatever the hell was out there with a taste for human flesh and a standard of morals that allowed them to have it take people. Then they'd see he was right.

Then they'd see that he was dead right.


	2. My Imaginary

__

I linger in the doorway of alarm clock screaming,  
monsters calling my name.  
Let me stay,  
where the wind will whisper to me.  
The raindrops as they're falling  
tell a story.

Dib rested against the white walls of his "room," a prison cell decorated up to look like a real child's room. A prison cell designed for those whose crimes were having minds unlike the legal mind. His legs were drawn up to his chest, he was only breathing slightly. He was waiting until five o' clock, when the amount that his father's accountant had authorized for his treatment would run out and the crazy house would again reluctantly open the cell doors to let him go. Let him go, that was, until the next time.

Why didn't he just stop talking crazy? A smile played across his lips. Because he believed. That was the only real reason. It was his belief that kept him going, and he refused to be untrue to himself. No matter how much it cost him.

The fresh scent of an incoming rain came through the bars, temporarily drawing his attention. Rain, Zim hated the rain. It burned, penetrated his skin, harmed him. The rain was the weapon of the world turned against Zim in the same way that hatred and petty mindedness were sharp daggers turned towards him. Raindrops melted into shards of glass that drew blood when they tore through his clothes and littered the ground around his feet. He could almost understand Zim's pain, were Zim not a slimy monster from outer space that belonged rightfully dead.

__

In my field of paper flowers,  
and candy clouds of lullaby.  
I lie inside myself, _in my field of paper flowers and candy clouds of lullaby.  
_

He stood up slowly when a man in a white coat arrived at the cell door. The man didn't have keys in hand like a traditional prison warden because they wanted this place to seem like a home. A demented sort of sitcom home, that was, but still a home. A home where all the minds were troubled, but one that lacked the charm of the Addams family. "Time to go," the man said, chuckling from behind fat lips. "That is, until next time."

Dib picked up his bag and looked bored. "Until next time." 

I lie inside myself for hours  
and watch my purple sky fly over me.  
Don't say I'm out of touch

With this rampant chaos - your reality.

Passing by outside on his way to a taxi, paid for by his father's vast and empty wealth, Dib passed a student he vaguely recognized from class. It wasn't that he didn't know him- he'd recognize M anywhere. The mask that he wore, the frozen and glazed look, wasn't a look Dib had ever seen before. He looked straight over at Dib, his eyes as blank as the glass eyes of the creepy preserved pink rabbit from the science room. Honestly creeped out, Dib backed away from him. The boy's eyes didn't even seem to look at him, but at something above him. Dib wondered if he was about to get crapped on by a bird. Then, as quickly as they had arrived, the student was hustled off by two women in white coats with powerful sticks strapped to their hips.

I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge,  
The nightmare I built my own world to escape  
in my field of paper flowers  
and candy clouds of lullaby.

"How tragic," he overheard one of the workers holding a lipstick stained cigarette to her yellowed teeth say, oblivious that she was talking about personal information in front of a child patient. "He was found alone in his house, underneath his basement stairs, snapping at anyone who tried to get near him."

"My, his parents called for him to be taken here, then?"

"His parents are missing. They found a bloodstain on the sheets upstairs, but no body. The cars not gone, nothing."

"Creepy," the younger smoker, her eyes thick with mascara, shuddered. She looked down at Dib. "Get going! You shouldn't be standing out here staring at us!"

Dib turned heel and headed quickly for the taxi.

Riding through the falling slushy rain home, Dib huddled down in seats that smelled vaguely of barf and ignored the driver's coughing. He wondered if the driver would have a heart attack, hit a tree, and end both their lives right there. For once, however, fate was seemingly kind and dropped him at the end of the concrete walk leading up to the only house in the area with a giant telescope parked on the lawn.

He didn't bother asking Gaz if she'd missed him, as she was relaxing on the stairs with a can of soda and her game system. The last can of soda, he discovered when he went to the kitchen. He sighed and made a mental note to send in another request for a grocery purchase order to his father's accountant. If it weren't for that man, he didn't know how he and Gaz would have survived all those years.

He sat down, then got up again. He had to go to his classmate's house. He had to search for clues. This could be some new plot of Zim's, or some other horrible supernatural monster. Gods knew it certainly sounded like it, if the gossipers were to be trusted. He also knew that the police probably still had the place taped off, or at the very least the neighbors would be paranoidly keeping watch over the "Murder House." How to get into it without being seen was a problem, but not a big one. If he could sneak into an alien base, he could sneak into a house guarded by the city's overweight and underpaid police force. 

__

Without bothering to unpack from his latest, "vacation," Dib donned a black outfit and headed out via the drainpipe. The outside was slippery and clammy from the recent rain, but he was used to that. The rain was merely a problem because it increased the chance he'd leave footprints.

The irony of the fact that it was M who had sent him to the Crazy Home earlier that week didn't elude Dib. Now who was the one in the crazy house, and the one who wasn't likely to get out of it simply because of the mercy of a faceless accountant. Who was on the inside and who was on the outside now?

Dib shook his head. No, such petty thoughts were below him. Even if they didn't care, he was a savior of the human race. Saviors didn't have time for selfish thoughts or petty anger at the way they were treated by the rest of the race. Why? Because in the end, it was the saviors who got the last laugh, no matter how many laughs in their face they'd had to endure on the way.

The dark brown house loomed suddenly out of the ground as he reached the top of the hill, grateful for the cover of darkness. The house was the only one on the block with no light coming from inside, where utter silence reigned. Dib found one of the windows to be surprisingly unlocked, and took that as an invitation to let himself inside.

The house didn't look like a place where three people had gone suddenly missing and one had gone hopelessly insane. It looked like the family was merely away at work, not like they'd even gone away for a vacation. Of course, there was a police grid on the floor and other evidence of the search for answers, but beyond that…

The house settled, making it sound like someone had stepped on a loose board overhead. Dib raised his head quickly and then ducked behind a recliner. It had seemed too easy… there had to be a cop in the house watching over it. Or was that just settling? It hasn't exactly sounded like a footstep…

Dib finally crept out when he heard no more sounds. If it were something in the house, whatever it was, was upstairs. Clutching a flashlight, but not daring to turn it on yet, Dib rounded the oak banister and crawled up the carpeted stairs, his ears and nose on constant alert. Whatever it was, if it were anything, would have to be damn tricky to sneak up on him.

The upstairs was more disturbed, police tape lying about. A dry wind blew through, crossing his face. There had to be another window open somewhere, beside the window he'd opened. That didn't make any sense. It was raining, and this house was full of potential evidence.

He moved towards the direction of the wind, as if drawn by it. Yes, if whatever had done this had returned, it had opened the window. It had made the creaking sound. It would be there, waiting to be discovered, just as soon as he opened the door.

His fingers reached out, he gently pushed forward, and walked into the room.

I lie inside myself for hours  
and watch my purple sky fly over me.  
Swallowed up in the sound of my screaming,

cannot cease for the fear of silent nights.  
Oh how Ii long for the deep sleep dreaming,

the goddess of imaginary light.

Dib blinked back surprise. He was in his own bedroom, the window that he'd left open when he'd left to go investigate the murderer house giving off the air that he'd felt. No, wait. He was in the same outfit he'd worn home from the Crazy Home, not his spying gear. His bag lay at the foot of the stairs, unopened, not strewn out so he could get to his supplies like he'd left it. He ran down the stairs to find his sister sitting in the kitchen, the toaster smoking.

"Gaz? Did I… go to my room? Have I been… home this whole time?"

"You came home and passed out on the couch. Now leave me alone, I've only got fifteen levels left to go before I beat this game."

Dib frowned and wandered back up the stairs, hands in his pockets. That dream had seemed so real… but he'd never even been to the letter M's house. Of course, he hadn't been there. His dream must have been based on some twisted reimagining of his own house, not the real house. He hadn't gone out to investigate at all.

He didn't feel like going out investigating, for once in his life. Yes, it even came as a shock to him as he slipped out of his antiseptic scented clothes and into his pajamas. Shutting his window, he did something he usually didn't even think about doing in the back of his head… he locked the window. 

Tomorrow, he'd try to find a floor plan of house, since entering it in broad daylight was plausible. He'd find out exactly how wrong what he saw in his dream was.

A newspaper diagram confirmed what he didn't want to know. He had correctly dreamed out the house. From the detail of the wooden banister to the exact way the purple reclining chair had been left, he had dreamed himself inside M's house. Every detail was perfect. He had really been there… but then again, he hadn't. For an eight pack of batteries Gaz had sworn on her Game Slave II that he'd simply gotten out of the taxi, come inside, and conked out on the couch until he'd sleepwalked himself up to his room, and then apparently awakened. It didn't make sense.

"Maybe Zim is using some kind of dream controlling device to make me think I'm insane. Yeah, that could be it… but that doesn't explain why M wasn't in class today." Dib sipped on his juice nervously.

A ball hit him in the back of his head, splattering juice and his glasses all over the ground. He quickly recovered them, knowing exactly what kind of prank glasses in the mud were prone too, and looked up to see a smug-faced blonde girl looking down at him. He didn't know her, she was in one of the higher classes.

"Sorry I didn't see you sitting there. If I had, I would have aimed better," she snorted, garnering laughter from her friends before she trotted off.

As Dib watched her leave, ball tucked under her arm and her blonde hair flowing out behind her via eighty dollar styling gel perfection, he felt a bit odd. Not just odd, but like cold fingers were wrapping themselves around his sternum. It was only in that moment that he stood up and watched after her.

Words formed unbidden in his mouth as he watched her go. "Did you ever think as a hearse goes by, that you might be the next to die?"

__

__


	3. Tae Takes a Ride

A/N: I really should update my profile… it's not summer anymore.

Dib's fingers trembled nervously around his juice cup. He hadn't wanted to say those words, hadn't wanted to feel disgust rising up in his throat. He was used to taking all that was wrong with the world… was used to the pain that was inflicted. So why had he…?

The dreams from the crazy home, and the dream of being inside M's house. Did they mean something? Dib glanced sideways at the blonde girl through his thin eyelashes. If she died next, did that mean…?

Dib cut the last half of class that day, knowing that not only did Ms. Bitters care one way or another, but that his father's accountant would vouch for him being ill if he asked. The truth was, he did feel ill. 

Perhaps he'd done something, unleashed some horror in his investigations. If that were true, then why didn't he have a missing chunk in his memory? Something didn't seem right… and he had to figure out what it was.

He suspected Zim on some level, but he wasn't quite sure exactly what Zim could have done to him. The dream-controlling machine seemed likely enough, but was Zim brutal enough to kill just to make Dib feel insane? To lay the guilt on him, perhaps, and send him away to prison? More importantly, could Zim even bring himself to touch human body fluids to the point where he could handle killing someone in a way that would cause them to eject blood?

There'd only been a little blood on the scene. Maybe that had been accidental. Maybe Zim had tried to beam the family up and one of them had resisted… yes, that seemed more likely than Dib really wanted to think about. A family just vanishing? What explanation was more obvious than alien abduction? 

Then there was the chance that they weren't dead. They could be saved, if Dib could figure out where Zim was holding them. Zim could even be the reason why M had gone insane. Yes, the very strain of having to admit that Dib, one of his favorite victims for taunting, was right… the strain of having to admit that Dib wasn't wrong, wasn't crazy, wasn't….

Dib paused on the sidewalk and hit himself, a little too hard, in the forehead. "Go away!" he found himself screaming out loud, trying to make the cruel thoughts leave. A woman walking a baby carriage paused, then quickly turned the plastic wheels around and darted across the street to the other sidewalk.

Dib lowered his hands, feeling resignation. Don't be afraid of me, he thought. I'm not crazy… he felt a cool wetness against the sides of his head. In his frustration, his pale fingers had ripped into his skin right at the hairline, sending a single sad drip of reddish blood down the side of his face.

He couldn't go to the police. They wouldn't listen to him, no matter how much evidence he brought them. He didn't want to go home, despite the fact that he felt rather ill and the feeling was growing. He didn't really want to go to Zim's place only to puke up on the alien scum's front door, either, so he stumbled to the park and threw himself down on a concrete bench, drawing concerned looks from an elderly lady feeding the pigeons.

"Dib? Dib, is that you?" a man's voice asked. His eyes opened slightly. He felt like he was burning up all over with fever, like someone had taken a hot iron to his skin. His throat was parched, and the very air seemed to burn in his lungs.

A brown-haired man with fish-belly pale skin stood over him, pushing nervously back on thick glasses. "Jesus, kid, you're burning up. I know your father doesn't pay me to look after you, but he should. Your skin is all red. How long have you been sleeping in blistering sunlight?"

"Accoun-tant?" Dib asked.

The accountant set down his briefcase and removed a mini-bottle of an expensive brand of "mountain spring" water from it, handing it over to him. "Here, drink this. You sound horrible. What the heck are you doing sleeping in the park? You should be home. It's getting late."

Dib felt embarrassed. The man was being so kind, and he didn't even know his name. He would have asked for it right then and there, but he felt that he'd look rather silly accepting an invitation for a ride home from a man he only knew by face, not name.

The accountant's car was small and tidy, and smelled of cheap pine air freshener. He turned on the air conditioning, which did wonders to cool Dib's sunburned face. How the hell had he managed to fall asleep outside on a hot day wearing all black, anyway? His hands were raw and hurt to touch. He knew he was in for one hell of a fun ride when the burns would start peeling.

The accountant brought the car to a hault outside the atrocious blue house that Professor Membrane owned. "Kid, can I ask you something personal? Are you doing any drugs?"

Dib choked slightly. "No, sir. I wouldn't. They ruin your mind."

The man sighed and adjusted the volume on the soft-rock music coming out of the radio. "I worry about you. When your father says you're crazy… well, you do funny things, but you don't seem crazy. I was kind of worried you'd turned to them as a replacement for your father. I mean, without a father, who's there to tell a kid not to get into that kind of mess…"

"I told you, I'm not on drugs," Dib said angrily, shoving open the car door. "If you'll excuse me, I have a sunburn to treat."

The accountant frowned. "You know, maybe it'll turn into a tan. You could use some color."

Dib resisted the urge to reply "you should talk," and instead stalked up the walkway to the front door as quickly as he could. The accountant drummed his fingers on the car's steering wheel, wanting to say more but not daring to. He'd been able to feel the boy's tormented feelings radiating across the interior of the car. 

Haven't I done enough for you, Dib, the man thought to himself as he pulled out and sped down the mostly abandoned road. Haven't I done enough?

Apparently not.

Tae, his gray hair sticking up in what he thought to be a trendy hairstyle, was heading home from a late night at some sports practice or another. What sport it was, wasn't important. His mother had pushed him into it, he didn't like it, but he'd keep doing it to get a college scholarship one-day. At least, that's what his mother told him, and being young he just kept on believing it. 

His headphones were playing something trendy off a popular Internet radio station, he didn't know the name but it had a nice beat that went something like da-deeh-da-deh-drum solo. It was catchy. He'd have to figure out what it that he'd downloaded onto his Ipod. 

The street was virtual empty other than one car. Tae walked alone the sidewalk, ignoring it, wishing he'd rode his bike to school. He wasn't going to be home in time for TRL with the way practice had gotten out late.

The car's engine revved unnaturally, drawing Tae's head up. Bright white round eyes, like the eyes of a demon, were leering down on him. The car had jumped up onto the sidewalk, diving between two meters, and was bearing straight down at him. With a shriek of horror he launched himself sideways. His fingers lost their grip on the Ipod and he felt it falling a different direction as he fell forward.

The car's right headlight shattered into jagged pieces as it hit the Ipod, sending white plastic and computer chips flying through the air. Tae hit a tree and rebounded off it. Despite the racing of his heart and the knowledge that he was in mortal danger, his first thought was for his mp3 player. His parents would never believe what had happened to it… had he gotten a grass stain on his pants?

He struggled to his feet to find the car had turned itself around, and was purring like a feline about to pounce. Then, with a squeal of black tires, it tore forwards towards him. Tae felt his back hit the tree again as he struggled to get out of the way. He felt his foot giving way, and realized there was a ravine behind the tree. He fell backwards, letting his body tumble down the small hill. 

He heard the crunch of metal and glass against wood, and the crack of a tree trunk breaking. The sound of the engine didn't die away, and one bright spotlight cut out through the falling twilight, like a search engine intent on finding him.

He forced himself to his feet, a nasty bruise on his head, his pants shredded by brambles past the point of salvation. He staggered forward, not caring if the branches cut his hands, hearing someone pushing through the weeds behind him. He didn't dare turn around, didn't dare look at their face. Something inside him told him he'd die if he did.

He could hear sounds of more cars whizzing by ahead. The freeway! If he could just make it across the freeway, he'd be safe from who or whatever was following him. There was a housing development there, someone would be able to call the police, save him from the insanity following at his heels.

His blood dropped on the ground. His breath became visible, moist pants in the cooling night air. The wind stung his eyes and made his tears fall. He was almost there, despite his cut fingers and legs. He was almost safely out of the brambles. 

Running across the ditch towards the freeway, his head reeled with joy… until his foot hit a patch that had sunk from drainage. He stumbled, landing hard on his side. Branches broke behind him. He couldn't move, trembling in a curled up ball on the side of the freeway, a concrete barrier between himself and salvation.

A passing smoker had the window of his car down. He normally wouldn't have paid any attention to the scream, thinking it was just kids playing with water guns filled with ice water, but there was just something about it. It sounded like someone was hurt. It sounded like someone was afraid. He pulled his car over onto the soft shoulder, gravel throwing up rocks against the underside of his car. 

He stepped out of the car and looked back in the direction that he'd heard the shriek. Someone, a slender adult, stood up on top of a sewer drain. The person was too far away for him to see if they were hurt or not, but he or she didn't seem to be in too much pain as the stranger strode in leggy steps back across the grass and straight into the woods lining the roadside.

The motorist frowned. There had been something familiar about that person, even from a distance. Like he'd seen that face in a newspaper article a long time ago. Like he or she'd been a big deal at one time, but time had thrown this stranger into obscurity. 

He turned around to find a child huddled beside his car, shaking and rocking himself. His arms and legs were covered in bruises and small, bramble cuts. He had headphones on that led to no music playing device, only a plug dangling loosely beside him. "Are you… okay?" he asked, cautiously advancing on the boy.

Tae, his eyes blank and his pupils as wide as they were capable of being, merely stared back at the man, any trace of recognition gone from his soul.

The motorist didn't know at the time that he hadn't been the only one to witness the stranger walking off into the woods before the boy appeared, but the other person who had seen it wouldn't talk. That's because first, they weren't actually a person, and second, talking about what they had seen would require them to revel how they had seen it… and how does one explain to the police that you saw a person that left no traces of his or her existence… while flying in your space ship?

Dib went to Skool the next day despite his burn, knowing he'd be taunted for it but not really caring. He never expected to take a rock on the side of his head, knocking him to the ground. His wound screamed with fresh pain as he fell onto his side, looking up to find the blonde girl from the day before, looming over him. Her eyes were lit as though with an internal fire, and two of her friends were barely holding her back.

"You freak!" she screamed, hair flying wildy. "You killed my cousin! You killed my cousin, you freak of nature, you murderer!" Her pupils had become tiny slits, and she screamed out the words like a wild animal tearing at meat.

Dib skittered backwards, confusion in his round eyes. Zita, standing against a wall, uncharacteristically offered an explanation. "Her cousin, Tae, was found in a ditch by a motorist, all cut up and screaming like a howler monkey. He killed himself last night in the crazy home."

"I see, but what does that have to do with me?"

"She says you said he was going to die."


End file.
